


Good Neighbors

by Mynuet



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7174361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mynuet/pseuds/Mynuet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek's been having trouble, but luckily he's more than just in good hands.  Stiles, his intrepid insurance agent, is on a mission to help him manage the risks of everyday (supernatural) life, recover from the unexpected (hunters), and realize his dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Neighbors

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Eeyore9990 for putting up with my failboat ways and giving me the perfect last line and summary, and to fruit-of-my-hoechloins for the original prompt. *glomp!*

The godawful noise came out of nowhere, making Derek jerk the wheel involuntarily. It only took a moment to regain control, but it was enough for a dark shape to run out into the street. He had to make the split-second decision of which way to aim the car, since there was nowhere near enough space to brake.

Taking a chance with hitting a living being was never an option, but wrapping his Toyota - loaded with safety features! - around a stop sign was going to be pretty hard to live down if any of his family ever found out. If. Maybe, if fate was kind and the headache he'd somehow acquired would go away, he could get this all taken care of before the Hale family cavalcade returned from visiting Laura's prospective in-laws. 

There was still a whine in his ears, and he winced against the pressure of it as he got out of the car, scanning the street for whatever it was he'd almost hit. The dark shape was still huddled and quivering in the middle of the street, and when he approached, it resolved itself into a half-starved dog. It didn't even snarl or try to run, just shivered. 

Derek sighed and nudged it with his toe, trying to get it to move without having to touch the filthy, matted coat or the sores that might well be mange. It just oozed closer to his leg, looking up at him with huge, trusting eyes. "No. The last stray I picked up gave me fleas. I can't do that again."

He moved back to the side of the road, digging in his wallet for his insurance card. The stupid mutt, of course, followed him. "No. Shoo. Go beg around the diner, they always put water out for strays."

Doing his level best to ignore both the dog and the occasional car driving past, Derek read the insurance card and discovered he was apparently supposed to sing the damn jingle. Thankfully, the back had some fine print and, while there wasn't anything as useful as a phone number, apparently emergency assistance would be triggered if a drop of blood hit the card inside a little square printed on the side.

The noise that was still making his temple throb made him misjudge, and he clawed his hand open a lot more than the small pinprick he'd intended, but the blood got where it needed to go. In copious amounts, even.

"Okay, don't panic, I am a trained insurance professional!" A kid in a suit popped out of thin air, looking around wildly and jabbing the air with a pen while clutching a clipboard to his chest with the other hand. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency!"

Derek exchanged confused looks with the dog. It was that kind of moment.

"Holy shit, dude, don't scare me like that, you're fine!" The kid paused for a second, whispered, "mutism, oh my God, I'm an idiot," then jammed the clipboard between his thighs and the pen in his mouth before signing what he probably intended to be an offer of help.

"You realize you just asked me to help you, right?" Derek signed as he spoke. "It's directional."

Scowling as he got his things back in hand, the kid said, "Look, dude, I only just started learning, give me a break."

"I thought you were a trained insurance professional." Not that the kid looked old enough to be anything but jailbait.

"Sign language is an optional add-on," he said haughtily. "So, this fine example of what not to do when driving is the issue?"

"There was a noise," Derek said. It didn't seem like enough, so he added, "And a dog."

They both turned to look at the fact that the dog was, indeed, there. It looked up and quickly straightened to a seated position, seeming embarrassed at having been caught licking a very personal place. "I don't hear a noise, but whatever. You're covered. I _gotchu._ "

Derek just looked at him, wondering what he'd done to deserve this. The boy cleared his throat and said, "Right, yeah, I'll just..." 

The sentence didn't seem likely to be picked back up after he trailed off, but he dissolved into a welter of long limbs that seemed only loosely attached under the suit that someone apparently thought he'd grow into. There were some mutters, quite a few clicks of the pen, a few hasty scribbles, and finally, "Your deductible is $250. If you'd like to make payment arrangements, I can stretch it out for six months, added to your existing premium payment. More than that and I'd need to have you fill out an application, but I've got it--"

"Or you could just shove cash in my face, that's okay," the kid muttered, grabbing it from Derek's hand. "Not like courtesy is a thing for your kind, right?"

"My _kind_?" Derek's growl felt like it was coming from the soles of his feet all the way up through his body, the noise that was still shrieking out from a distance not allowing him even the slightest reserve of patience.

Gesturing at Derek's face and chest, the kid said, "Don't even tell me you don't use your perfect good looks to get away with being a grump, because I won't believe you."

Derek would've liked to argue. The best he could come up with was, "This is terrible customer service."

"Whatever." The boy signed something on the clipboard with a flourish, then tapped the tip of the pen to the paper. In the same instant, the car made an odd popping sound and blurred into motion. Derek's eyes watered and he could only describe it as feeling like his brain had rewound, but after he blinked and reoriented himself, his car was sitting on the curb, completely unharmed. "Sign here, please."

"What..." Derek looked between the clipboard and the car, trying to make it all fit in his brain. "That's it?"

Looking at him askance, the kid said, "You're the one that signed up for the magic insurance service. What did you think was going to happen when someone appeared; I'd send you to a body shop?"

Derek hadn't really thought about it, but he supposed it made sense. He hadn't really thought about witches making a business of their magic use, but then again, how many times had people acted surprised that werewolves could just go to the supermarket instead of hunting down hapless deer?

"Here's my card - next time you're really supposed to sing the jingle, okay? It's company policy, we're supposed to fine you if you call in a false emergency." The kid, whose card declared his name to be Stiles, ripped a piece of paper off the clipboard and handed it to him. "Here's your receipt, and there's a survey on the back if you have any feedback about how your claim was processed today."

He gave a cheery but jerky wave and then disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived. Derek found himself once again exchanging glances with the dog, then shaking it off and climbing in his car. He steadfastly ignored the dog's pitiful eyes and concentrated on the survey, barely noticing the noise that had caused all the drama abruptly cutting off. 

Digging out a pencil, he checked off high marks on all the checkboxes, since they all dealt with things like "handled claim efficiently" rather than "didn't act like a little shit." In the comment box, he lifted his pen three times before finally writing, "Needs to discover the magic of tailoring."

The words lifted off the page and zoomed through the window and into the sky as soon as he was done. Derek shook his head and put the car in gear, rolling about ten feet down the road before he sighed and opened the door. The dog was in the passenger seat within two seconds. "This doesn't mean I'm keeping you."

The dog was kind enough not to comment.

***

Derek's fists were clenched so tightly into fists that his nails were digging into his skin, but he kept them in his pockets and fought against the urge to allow them to turn to claws. The hunters that had cornered him at the gas station were still talking, making awful comments about his sisters and accusing his mother of all sorts of terrible things. The older one, the one in charge, was just watching and listening, until the air shifted and he gestured for the others to be quiet.

"See, Derek - may I call you Derek?" He paused for a moment, but Derek didn't move or respond. "The thing is, Derek, I have a job. It's not a glamorous job or an easy one, but it's an important job. And do you know what that job is?"

"Telemarketer? They get paid to bother people who aren't doing anything."

The man smiled, and it wasn't even a little bit pleasant. "No, my job is to protect people from monsters. My question is, does being a monster run in your family?"

"Does being a murderer run in yours?" Derek lost the fight against his claws and they sank into his palms, but he kept his hands in his pockets, unwilling to give the fuckers any excuse whatsoever.

"You're thinking of your bitch mother," one of the others said, moving around behind him so he was at the edge of Derek's peripheral vision.

The leader shook his head and picked up the squeegee from the center island, covering Derek's windshield with dirty water and then neatly wiping it off again. "I'm just trying to help you see clearly, Derek."

He started to move away, and Derek uncurled his hands in his pockets. "You forgot to check the oil."

Two popping noises happened in quick succession after the leader said, "Check the man's oil,"   
and then a youthful voice cried out, "What the hell? That's vandalism, I'm calling the cops right now."

Derek turned to see Stiles holding up a cell phone, pointing it at the faces of each of the hunters and the front license plates of the SUVs they'd been about to climb into. "See, these assholes deliberately cornered him in - unlawful detainment, right? The smug looking one with the hobo stubble gave the order, and the one with the weasel nose broke the window."

Stiles turned to get a shot of the window, and two of the hunters grabbed him, trying to wrestle the phone away from him. Derek took a step forward, only to stop when he saw the reflection of the gun the leader of the hunters was holding just out of sight in the front seat of his SUV. Stiles was cursing up a storm, flailing and struggling, but the two men were managing to hold him and the third was coming to grab the phone.

"That's assault and theft!" Derek winced as the guy that had broken his window bent back the fingers Stiles had wrapped around his phone. "Why aren't you helping, it was your window!"

"He's got a gun," Derek said, his hands down at his sides and clearly visible.

Stiles crowed with laughter, even as the phone finally slipped from his grasp. "You hear that, Dad? Felony sentencing enhancement, and probably transportation charges, too!"

Looking around in confusion, Derek wondered if maybe being a supernatural insurance agent was a family business for Stiles. There was no one else there, though, just the hunters who were looking about as confused as Derek felt. 

The leader of the hunters rolled his eyes. "Just get in the cars."

After throwing the phone to the ground and stomping on it, the other hunters complied, only to have blue and red lights flash as an army of police cars rolled into the station and blocked the hunters from leaving. Derek was torn between the urge to laugh or groan - all he'd wanted was to get some gas and maybe a Twinkie, and now he was blocked in twice over. 

"Step out of the vehicles and put your hands where I can see them." The voice crackled out over a loudspeaker from the car in the lead, and Derek could see guns drawn and pointed at the hunters. He put his own hands up, though, just in case.

Stiles scrambled to his feet, gathering up his broken phone and tugging on Derek's arm to pull him back behind the lead police car. "They're going to want our statements. Just tell them the truth; you'll be fine."

"Stop tainting the witness statement." An older guy, one whose badge identified him as the sheriff, playfully cuffed Stiles over the head. "Go on, you go with Parrish. I'll talk with your friend who's going to tell me the truth."

"Client," Stiles said, lifting his eyebrows in a way that might've been deemed subtle if the viewer was on Mars. And nearsighted.

"Just go," the sheriff said, sounding weary. "And you, Mr. --" He waited for Derek to provide his name and continued. "Mr. Hale, I'm sorry to say that we've got to examine your car as evidence, but if you give me a minute to deal with things, I can take your statement and then get you home."

Derek nodded, not sure what to say or do. The idea of calling the cops on hunters wasn't one that would have occurred to him in a million years, but he was stuck with it now. "The kid was recording it," Derek said. "They smashed the phone, though."

"We've got a copy," the sheriff said. "The app he's got streams and records on a central database, just in case someone thinks they're going to get away with something like this."

"That's..." Pretty clever, actually, although Derek was panicking internally at the thought that he might've flashed eyes or claws and had them caught on tape.

The sheriff clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Hale, we'll get this all taken care of. I want the people in my county to feel safe."

Derek's throat closed up, and all he could do was nod.

***

It was just shy of midnight, and he was on a tampon run after having been woken up from a dead sleep. It was why he was pretty sure he was hallucinating when he saw Stiles, in a perfectly fitted suit and with his hair slicked back, wandering the aisles of the all-night supermarket. He wondered briefly if there was a reason his imagination had seen fit to make Stiles look like a more approachable version of Arthur from Inception, and if it had anything to do with a) Derek's long-standing crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or b) how long it had been since Derek had a date.

"Derek, hey!" Stiles waved a bit and yawned. "My dad's going to call you in the morning."

It had to be a dream, since logic and that sentence had no relation. On the other hand, why would he have a box of tampons in his hand if he was dreaming?

He must have looked as confused as he felt, because Stiles said, "My dad? The sheriff? He's going to want victim statements, and to ask if you want to talk to the DA about what kind of plea deal should be on the table for those hunter assholes."

"The sheriff is your dad?" It explained a lot, actually. "So you live around here?"

"The company tries to use local agents whenever possible," Stiles said, running a hand over his hair and dislodging a few strands to fall over his face. It was a distressingly good look. "Theoretically, it's because we offer a hometown touch, neighbors serving neighbors, but the fact that it uses less energy doesn't hurt."

Derek nodded, shifting from foot to foot and wondering when he'd lost the ability to hold a conversation. He could almost hear Laura in his head saying he'd never had it. "That makes sense. Strange I've never seen you around before, though."

Shrugging, Stiles said, "Different age groups. Everybody knows of the Hales, though. Even people who don't know about the extra layer of the world think you guys are, like, a cult or something."

"Are you calling my family a cult?" Derek raised an eyebrow, enjoying the way Stiles flushed.

"No! Well, sort of. Not in a bad way!" Waving a hand in the air, Stiles said, "Just in the way that Dad can add hate crime charges because they were harassing you due to your family's religious beliefs. The DA's up for re-election; voters would eat that stuff up."

"So glad the systematic harassment and hunting of my family can help get someone elected." 

Stiles shrugged. "Look, dude, it's the right thing to do anyway. Why should these assholes be the only ones to bank favors and gain influence? Better they should scurry and hide like the rats they are."

It was a fair point, even if it made Derek itch between his shoulderblades with the urge to run and hide. "That's what we're supposed to do. Run and hide, because if we fight back, it just gives them an excuse to say we deserve it."

"Just how long have these guys been after you? What's their deal?" 

"They're hunters," Derek said with a shrug. "Trying to get home alive is one of the first things we're taught, years before we can change or even know for sure that we'll be able to."

The open-mouthed stare that was Stiles' only response made Derek uncomfortable, and he shrugged before heading to the self-checkout, grabbing a bag of some sort of chocolate from one of the endcaps on the way. He was already through scanning his items when Stiles caught up. 

"That's deeply fucked up, man. I'm sorry."

"You haven't done anything." As far as Derek knew, at any rate. He'd been fooled before.

"Still." 

Derek finished scanning his items and hesitated a moment, not sure whether it would be polite to leave even though he desperately wanted the conversation to be over. 

Stiles looked between him and the store and said, "Can you wait for me, just for one sec? If I don't actually get the bread, my dad's going to disown me, but I, just, can you wait?"

Derek nodded, not sure why he was agreeing. Stiles lit up and started moving at a fast clip toward the back of the store, not quite breaking into a run. Derek stayed where he was for a minute, but felt incredibly stupid as the clerk started eyeing him. He'd just go outside, and maybe he'd wait or maybe he'd come to his senses and just go.

Or, unexpectedly, there was option three: be subjected to a crippling blast of noise as soon as he exited. He staggered, instinctively backing away from the noise, vaguely aware that he was moving away from the lights of the store, from the parking lot and his car, but unable to focus. 

He was just about to slip into the shadows behind the store when he felt his arm being pulled. Stiles was there, his face concerned and his mouth moving, but Derek couldn't concentrate on anything but trying to block out the noise. Stiles frowned, doing something with a phone before snapping his fingers.

The lack of noise almost made him stumble. Stiles caught him, then signed what was probably intended to be "the deafness is temporary" and "what's wrong?"

"Noise," Derek said, signing along since not hearing himself was strange. "Same as when I had to swerve the first time. Awful."

Stiles looked around, frowning, then signed, "I can't hear anything."

"I'm going home," Derek said, digging in his pocket for his keys. Stiles started to sign something, but Derek just shook his head and kept walking. He was tired, and he wouldn't even be there if Laura was better at planning, or if he hadn't stopped to talk to Stiles.

Just as he got in the car, Stiles shoved a phone in front of him with a message open on the memo app. _HQ confirmed there was a noise above the range of human hearing, but it cut out right after I was recording. Your hearing should be back within ten minutes. I'd put it back now, but I got reamed out for using magic without the necessary contract stuff being done first. Next time, you'll have to sing the jingle. Or just call my dad, although that won't be immediate._

Derek sighed, wanting to bang his head against the steering wheel. "Goodnight, Stiles."

Pulling back, Stiles looked dejected, his mouth moving as he nodded, or at least jerked his head like he was nodding. Derek didn't have the strength to do or say anything else, just shut his door and drove home, tossing the bag at Laura on his way upstairs to hide his head under a pillow and just block out the entire damn world.

***

There was no reason to believe in a conspiracy. Yes, he'd had a run of bad luck, and there had been a few odd incidents with the rest of the family having bad luck, but it didn't mean anything. Peter's son might've figured out about werewolves at any point in the past twenty years, and Laura's car could've thrown a rod at any time, and Malia taking off into the woods had happened regularly throughout her life, and odd noises were probably to be expected with a group blessed with enhanced hearing.

It could all be explained away, and had been when Derek had brought it up at dinner, with amusement from Talia and derision from Cora. He'd dropped the subject, long before Peter and Cora had stopped ostentatiously dropping their silverware and gasping about it being a sign of something evil afoot. And, after a week with no incidents, it seemed like they might have been right.

Except they had been completely, 100% wrong, and he was never, ever going to shut up about it for the rest of his life. Which might not be very long, given his arm was oozing black, veins coloring purple in spreading patterns down to his wrist and towards his shoulder, darkness spreading like ink dropped in water. 

He couldn't go back to his car - his head was still aching from hitting the windshield when someone had slammed into the back of his car, then reversed and done it again. He'd managed to climb out, looking behind him and barely able to make out the figure standing there in the fading light of dusk, gun in hand and blonde hair moving with the wind. He froze, dizziness making his head swim, and then the woman yelled, "Come on!"

"We need him alive," said someone else, a man, but Derek couldn't make out anything else because he was already running, through an open gate and over someone's back fence to stumble and roll down a hill into a creek. Staggering, he held onto a tree and whimpered at the pain in his arm. He couldn't use it, couldn't even think of it, and digging out his phone with his other hand jarred it enough that he bit down on his lip to hold in a cry. 

The phone was dead, probably from the water he'd fallen in, and it fell from his hands when another wave of pain shot through him, his head and arm aching in time with the beat of his pulse. Swallowing hard, he tried to find it in himself to howl, only to hear the crack of another shot. Crashing through the underbrush, he had only two thoughts in his head - he had to escape, and he couldn't bring his family into this unprepared. They wouldn't be ready for wolfsbane bullets, wouldn't be any more on guard than he'd been; less so, because they'd be worried about why he'd howled.

The forest had been his home all his life, his friend, his sanctuary, but he was jumping at every shadow as he stumbled forward and tried to recognize any of his surroundings. He'd get home, he would, and his mom would fix things, she'd know what to do, or Peter would cut his arm off and even that would be a relief, and Laura would give him hell about what he'd done to his car, because it wasn't like he was near his car to have Stiles fix it. 

Stiles... Stiles with his bright eyes, and his laugh as he asked Derek to remember the jingle, and how did that damn thing go, anyway? 

"You remembered! You-- Holy shit!" There were hands on him, holding him up, and Stiles was so close. "What the hell?"

"Shouldn't be here," he said, trying to push Stiles away. "Not safe, go!"

Stiles just held him tighter, easing him down to sit at the base of a tree. "Easy, big guy, I'm not going to desert my favorite customer, not when you finally serenaded me."

Choking on a laugh, Derek gasped, "Do better... next time."

"You're darn right you will." Stiles started to pat him down, only to stop and stare at his own hand in horror. "Oh my God, that is so gross. _So_ gross."

Derek looked between Stiles and his arm, which now seemed to be melting into a black goo. "Tell my mom - warn them. Hunters."

"Fuck that." Stiles looked around, as if he was checking for eavesdroppers rather than looking out for the people that had already shot Derek and were very likely looking to for their next murder victim. "Listen, I'm not supposed to... but, then again, exigent circumstances, and we can always go get you in your car--"

"No!" Derek lurched up to grab Stiles with his good hand. "No! They--" He broke off when his lungs seized and he couldn't stop coughing, retching up black mucus that tasted like rotted flowers. When he could breathe, he said urgently, "Dangerous. Could still be there."

"Perfect!" Stiles clapped his hands together, grinning broadly, only to clear his throat when what was probably Derek's most epic bitchface of his life registered. "Obviously not, you know, perfect, it's just, we're limited in what magic we're allowed to cast, and the penalties are, well, and I need this--"

What Stiles needed was something Derek was destined not to know; his eyes drifted shut and he passed out while Stiles was still talking.

***

While Derek had never given much thought to the afterlife, one way or another, he was fairly sure he had at no point been sufficiently horrible as to be doomed to an eternity of dog breath and slobber and the faint smell of asphalt and astringent that the stray always smelled like. "Who let the damn dog in my room?"

"You know your Honey Boo Boo Bee doesn't sleep without you," Laura said, breezing in with her phone in her hand. "And you love that dog, don't even try to lie about it."

"I refuse to call her that; it's not a fit name for a living creature," Derek said, the words coming out automatically even as he tried to sort out why he felt strange and what had happened. "Where's Stiles?"

Laura lowered the phone enough to give Derek a look that made him want to hide under the bed or wipe it off her face or both. "And you think Honey Boo Boo Bee is bad? At least she's not a human being writing that on a business card."

"Fuck you," was his reasoned and reasonable response.

"He's in the kitchen," Laura said. "Mom is either going to kill him or adopt him; I don't think either of them is sure."

Derek groaned, pushing himself to sit up. "What the hell happened?"

"You got yourself shot," Laura said. "Because apparently you can't get a date like a normal person."

He managed to get to his feet, although he was still dizzy enough to cling to the wall. It didn't matter, though, as long as he could get some _food_. He felt like he hadn't eaten in a hundred years. "I _said_ someone was watching us. I _told you_ , but did you guys listen?"

"Dude, just because you were out in the woods looking like Bambi--"

She cut off at his growl, and he caught a glimpse of her eye roll as he jumped down the stairs, wobbled and staggered before catching himself in the doorway to the kitchen. "You didn't warn them?"

"He warned _me_ ," his mother said, her face set in disapproving lines as she looked at him. "And I will handle it, _without_ panicking unnecessarily."

"They were hunters, Mom," Derek said, clutching the doorjamb to stay upright. "They rammed my car and then shot me full of wolfsbane. I should be _dead_ right now, and you think that doesn't even merit a _warning_?"

Holding up a serving spoon, Stiles said brightly, "Stew? You need nutrients, man. Like, your bones are basically hollow right now from how much it took out of you."

Derek made his way into the kitchen, walking stiffly until he sank into a chair, where Stiles promptly provided him a giant bowl of stew and a plate piled high with yeast rolls. "Carbs and red meat, seriously. The only time I had to have that cast on me, I was in bed stuffing myself for a week. Mad props you were even able to stand up, dude."

"Werewolves heal very quickly, Mr. Stilinski." His mom was moving around the kitchen, tidying up in a way she only ever did when stressed or annoyed. 

"So, Derek, HIPAA limits and all that, can I show your mom exactly what shape you were in?" 

Derek just shrugged, too focused on getting the food into his mouth as quickly as he could without actually pouring it in. He only looked up when he heard glass shattering and saw his mom with a hand over her mouth, looking at a blank space in between where Stiles was holding his hands up like he was holding an invisible basketball. 

"So, yeah. Maybe you could allow that being upright is kind of amazing."

Talia's hands were shaking as she reached out to touch the air in front of Stiles, then in a blink she was across the kitchen and running her hand down the side of Derek's face. Derek cut his eyes at Stiles, but there was no explanation coming as to what had just happened. 

"Oh, baby."

"It's okay," he mumbled, hating the pain in his mother's eyes. "I'm fine."

"You will be," she said firmly, patting his cheek once more before she pulled up a chair opposite him. "Now, tell me everything. From the beginning."

Looking down at his bowl, he said, "It's just like I told you the other day."

"I know," she said. "And I'm sorry, but this time I'm listening."

Derek talked, pausing every few words to take a bite or drink some of the juice Stiles had placed in front of him. At one point, Stiles held up a finger and stepped away from the table to make a call, which made Talia and Derek exchange a quick look. "You haven't explained about how well we can hear?"

"I haven't explained anything," Derek said. "I've only met him once when it wasn't because he was working, and even that ended up with him getting me in the car after the noise thing happened again."

"Really? I'd gotten the impression you two were... closer." The way Talia looked at him and gestured in a way that wasn't obscene but looked as if it should be made Derek groan and swear he was adopted. "No dice, kid, you look just like me."

It was a blessed moment of normalcy in the midst of chaos, and it vanished as soon as Talia heard what Stiles was saying. "Did he say _Argent_?"

"Yes? Remember when I told you about the hunters that broke my car windows?" A better person would've resisted adding, "You got mad at me when I told you they'd been arrested?"

"Argents shouldn't be arrested," Peter said as he slid into a chair next to Talia. "They should be put down, like the mad dogs that they are."

Stiles was getting louder, until he abruptly shut down and said, "Yes, sir," before hanging up and coming back to the table, which now boasted five werewolves all looking at him expectantly. "You guys know that's creepy, right?"

Cora snorted. "You would know, _Bilinski_."

"Seriously? You think this is the time?" Stiles shook his head and leaned back against the counter, looking them over. "Family counseling. You guys really need to look into it."

"Argents," Talia said from between her teeth. "Why is this the first I'm hearing about them?"

Derek's current sexuality was all about the way Stiles curled his lip in response to that, but it was even less of a time for that than for Cora being a brat. "Because you weren't interested to hear it before? My dad's been stalling bail with help from Whittemore--"

That got Peter sitting up straight. "David Whittemore? What's he--"

"He's the DA, now let me finish a fucking sentence," Stiles said, his jaw stiff. "The flunkies are still in lockup, but the judge granted an emergency bail on humanitarian grounds for the lead guy, one Chris Argent. His dad's about to be admitted to hospice for end-of-life care, and the judge just lost his mom to cancer last year, so he's out."

"If he's even--"

Peter's derisive comment cut off as one moment Stiles was there, and the next he'd disappeared. 

***

The Hales were hunting the hunters. Talia had declared that it was time to stop allowing the Argents to act with impunity, and Peter had backed her up completely. Cora's protest that they didn't even know if anything had happened to Stiles was shot down with a crisp, "They almost killed your brother. Stiles doesn't matter."

Derek had disagreed about how much Stiles mattered, but he hadn't even had a chance to bring it up before his mother had declared that he would be staying home. His protests were ignored as thoroughly as all his warnings and unease had been before, but when he tried to say so, he'd gotten an impatient eye roll from Laura, a demand that he let it go from Cora, and a hug from Talia. "You're still healing, baby. I need you to stay here, stay safe, and watch your cousin."

"I should be there," he said, but it wasn't any use. Soon enough he was sitting in the kitchen by himself, poking listlessly at a piece of potato sitting in a tiny puddle of congealing gravy at the bottom of his bowl. 

"You should howl for your mate," Malia said, leaping up to sit cross-legged on the counter and start fishing chunks of beef out of the stewpot. "A good mate wouldn't want you to be upset like this."

"He's not my mate," Derek said glumly. "I don't even have his number."

Malia tilted her head to the side, obviously trying to make sense of things. She'd come a long way from the feral coyote Peter had dragged home , but some of the niceties of human life still escaped her . They'd had to have an _extremely_ hurried lesson about consent and courting the first time she'd seen a boy she was attracted to and immediately started taking her clothes off. Explaining "not dating but probably interested" wasn't going to happen.

Especially since she jumped off the counter to hold up a phone that didn't belong to any of the Hales. "Can't you just look up his number on his phone?"

"Oh, shit." Derek grabbed the phone out of her hand, sure that Stiles wouldn't have left it behind if he was just on a job. He was stymied by the screen demanding a passcode, at least until it started ringing and the sheriff's voice blared out, "Why is your work calling me?"

"Stiles disappeared," Derek said. "About half an hour ago."

The amount of cursing on the other end of the line was a pretty clear indication that it was not, in fact, a work-related disappearance. "My family went out to find the Argents and deal with them."

"Aw, _crap._ " Somehow, it was worse than the cursing had been. "Look, kid, hold on to the phone and answer it if anyone calls. And tell your family that if I find them committing crimes, I'm going to arrest them."

"Sir?" Struggling to get the words out, Derek said, "Stiles - is Stiles--"

The line went silent for a moment before the sheriff said, "I'll have him call you when he can."

Derek was left staring at the phone, the lock screen picture of Stiles and a group of kids his age all mushed against a glass so that it seemed they were trapped in the phone. Derek started pacing, trying to think of anything to do, then smacked his hand against his forehead. Of course, duh.

"Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there!" Malia was looking at him like he'd lost his mind, but nothing else happened. Desperately, he dug through his wallet for the business card Stiles had given him, singing the jingle again and again as he cut into his thumb with a claw to bleed on the card. 

"You're covered," said a short red-head in sky-high heels, holding a clipboard and looking at him with disdain. "I apologize for the inconvenience of having to wait five entire seconds for assistance from your car insurance company when there's no car actually nearby."

Holding up the phone so the red-head could see the picture, he said, "Stiles is missing!"

She looked at him with her lips pursed. "You're Derek, right? Because he really should've explained before you started dating that agents on call are subject to random teleportation."

"Look, there's killers that are after my family and Stiles saved me - can you just, please, just check that he's okay?" Derek felt foolish as she sighed, one hand on her hip as she flipped her hair over her shoulder and looked up at the ceiling. "Look, I'll crash my car, I'll pay for more insurance, whatever, I just..."

Her face softened a fraction, just in time for Malia to growl and leap on her, bringing the red-head down to the ground, claws at her neck. "Tell my cousin where his mate is, _now_."

"Are you _kidding me_?" The girl's shriek had Malia scuttling backwards so fast she seemed like she was levitating, and Derek winced as he covered his ears. " _Seriously_?"

"I'm sorry," Derek said, reaching out to help her to her feet only to get his hands slapped away. She pushed a strand of her previously-flawless hair out of her face and glared. "Please, it's not Stiles' fault that my cousin is..."

She slashed a hand through the air and said, "Whatever. This isn't an insurance call, so I'm leaving. The phone will go to Stiles in twenty seconds, so make sure you aren't holding it if you don't want to go with it."

Malia growled and tried to make another demand, but Derek slapped a hand over her mouth and said a heartfelt thank you. The red-head gave a sharp nod and said, "If there's trouble, do the emergency override on the phone. It'll call in the cavalry."

"Your company?" he asked, but she shook her head and held up ten fingers, counting down. He let go of Malia, held tight to the phone, and closed his eyes.

He opened them again in near-total darkness, the glow of the phone screen giving him a glimpse of Stiles lying on the floor, his cheek purple with a livid bruise. Dropping to his knees, he tried to shift Stiles out of the fetal position only to stop when he groaned and flinched away. "Stiles? Stiles, please, you need to be okay."

Stiles groaned again, curling up tighter, and Derek touched the phone screen again to bring the light up. "Come on, do the magic like you did on me. We'll go and eat a ton of whatever you want - we could go to a steakhouse and have them slaughter a cow, okay? My treat."

"It's a date," Stiles said, sounding so weak that Derek was beyond terrified. "Except I can't cast magic on myself."

"Okay, we can... I can carry you, we'll get out of here." He reached for him, only to pull back when Stiles started coughing and choking. Stiles was gasping for air, and Derek used the light of the phone to see that there was blood on the white button down Stiles was wearing, long lines of it, and there was nowhere he could touch Stiles without causing him pain. "I'm going to kill them."

From somewhere above them, an old man said, "You can certainly try."

The worst of it was that the man was chuckling, framed by the light of the doorway behind him as he descended the stairs. "Thank you - Derek, isn't it? Your young man was proving quite stubborn, and I don't have a lot of time."

"You're Argent," Derek said. "You look pretty good for someone that's about to die."

"The severity of my condition may have been slightly exaggerated for the benefit of the judge," he said, still smiling as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "But it served its purpose, and now, well, tonight is going to be a glorious night!"

Faintly, Stiles said, "You talk too much."

"So you said." Argent picked up a cane that had been left at the base of the stairs, and Derek could see it gleaming wetly in the light. He growled and lunged forward only to take the blow across his shoulders, the weight of it pushing him to the ground. "Mountain ash!"

The man was insane, and Derek tuned out his ranting and the blows raining down on his shoulders to curl around the phone he still held and open the emergency call screen. No one appeared, and he tried to crawl away from the old man so that he could have a moment to see if he could look, see what he'd done wrong, or maybe even slip the phone to Stiles without Argent noticing.

Instead he heard a snapping sound, and the phone fell from his hand an instant later as the pain hit. His breathing got labored as the rib that had broken slid around, and the old man laughed again, jabbing him with the end of the cane as Derek flinched and tried to crawl away. "What do you think, _Stiles_? Are you ready to have a civilized conversation now?"

"Hard to do with a psycho." Stiles sounded steadier, but any hope Derek might've felt was crushed when he saw Stiles was on his knees, a knife held loosely at his throat and his hair pulled into a tight grip by the blonde that had shot Derek ages ago. Yesterday? 

Derek's sense of time was completely skewed, as the blonde's mouth moved in slow motion but the old man crossed the floor in the blink of an eye. "Didn't your mother teach you better manners? No, that's right, she died so she could get away from you!"

"Now, Kate." That was all the old man said, his tone not changing from the mild amusement he'd been radiating since his appearance.

"Leave him alone!" Derek struggled to his feet, only to gasp and fall again when the old man grabbed something else and swung gracefully to connect with Derek's side. The world was sizzling and copper and burning pain.

"You see, this animal should have died years ago." The pain was every bit as terrible and surprising the second time, electricity coursing through him and leaving him boneless. "His entire family was supposed to die, the whole nest of them, but animals can be clever."

The blunt weight of the mountain ash cane fell across his shoulders again, and Derek cried out. "Oh, not this one, obviously."

"So why'd you spend so much time trying to get to him?" Stiles grunted and Derek wanted to tell him to shut up, to give them whatever they wanted, to stay _safe_. Whatever they'd done to Derek didn't matter, never mattered, but Stiles kept talking like it did. "You guys kept harassing him - the noises, and the thing with the window, all that - why?"

"Science doesn't have a cure for cancer," the old man said with a shrug. He poked Derek with the cane, but otherwise let him have a moment to catch his breath. "Werewolves do, but then, oh, then there was you."

The old man grabbed Stiles by the chin and forced his face up. "You, Stiles, you are the key to everything. And you'll do what I ask, and do you know why?"

"To get your breath away from my face?" 

Derek's world was pain again as the old man leaned in, the electric shock rolling and continuing until Derek could feel his heart slowing down. He could distantly hear Stiles screaming, and then the jab of the baton was gone from his side and the old man said pleasantly, "That's why. This vermin will live, because he's _leverage_. The rest of his family... Well, I never did like to leave a task undone."

Stiles was cursing, sounding exactly like his father had earlier, and Derek shook his head. His ears were ringing, and maybe it was the association, but he could swear he heard... "Sirens."

"Oh, good." Stiles was grinning, despite the woman's grip on his hair and the way she brought the knife back up to the corner of his jaw. "You know, surrender is a viable option. Better than your other ones."

"Dad..." The woman was nervous, and Derek tensed, taking a breath and then another one as the old man snapped at her to get herself together. "We can find another damn insurance agent!"

Her knuckles tightened and Derek roared, leaping forward and ripping the knife out of her hand before she was able to draw it across the throat - Derek could just hope that the cut she'd made wasn't across an artery, because she'd dropped Stiles and pulled a gun out, and Derek was too weak, too slow, too blind, nowhere near enough to do anything but stare at the barrel that was pointing directly at his eyes.

The cane came down on her arm, and Stiles was holding it and that meant he was alive, and that was enough, more than enough. Derek tried to smile, but his rib was still broken and he couldn't breathe. There was noise and smoke and people pouring in, shouting, flashing lights, and then Stiles was holding his hand. "We have a date."

All Derek could do was nod. They did. After all this, they damn well did, and Derek was going to order dessert. Two desserts. And then peel the suit off of Stiles, because dammit, Derek deserved nice things.

The universe did not seem to agree, as he got dragged away from Stiles by more shouting people, who did all sorts of things with bags over his face and needles and more yelling that seemed frankly uncalled for. 

***

"So, apparently, there's exceptions to the whole werewolf healing thing." 

Derek glared at Stiles from his hospital bed, because there wasn't enough sarcasm to convey how thoroughly Derek understood that at this point. He was in a gown that smelled of scorched cotton and left his ass uncovered, he'd had a parade of people in his room, the tape holding his IV in itched, and if anyone ever tried to mention the word 'bedpan' to him again, he'd either rip their throat out or run away screaming.

"Yeah, the most common is burning, actually, but wounds inflicted by an alpha are the next highest." Stiles twitched in his wheelchair, fingers wrinkling and smoothing out the blanket over his lap. "Mountain ash, though, apparently that's a bit of a problem."

"A bit," Derek said. This was not even close to how he'd planned to see Stiles again, and the smell of disinfectant had been giving him headaches ever since he'd woken up to once again question his lifetime goodness level with regards to expectations of the afterlife.

The quiet hung over them like a wool blanket - smothering and irritating in equal measures. Stiles switched to steepling his fingers together and moving them against each other, and Derek allowed himself a moment of contemplating his hands and what he might possibly be able or willing to do with them. Stiles laughed weakly and said, "A spider doing push-ups on a mirror."

"What?" Stiles moved his fingers together and Derek could see it now, the way his hands were stretching and pushing together in rhythm. "Hilarious."

"I am," Stiles said, and there was the wooly silence again. Derek hated wool. And sheep. And hospitals. He opened his mouth to say something, only Stiles spoke at the same time.

The brief and polite exchange of "no, you go ahead" ended with Derek the loser, or winner. He had to go first, at any rate, and he didn't exactly have a plan. "Did you really want to go on a date?"

"Uh, duh," Stiles said. "I've only been trying to flirt with you without being unprofessional since your first car crash."

"It's rude to hit on people who're doing their job," Derek said. And he hadn't really wanted to lick Stiles up and down until they'd met at the grocery store, but some dim corner of his brain started functioning enough to think maybe that part didn't need to be said out loud.

Stiles smiled, shy and sweet and totally unlike anything he'd seen from Stiles before. Derek thought he might like it. "So you'd be interested?"

"Come here," Derek said, gesturing for him to come closer. Stiles hesitated, looking behind him to make sure the coast was clear before he stood. He paused and looked around again, because the nurse had been insistent that he had to use the wheelchair and stay in it, but then he crept closer to Derek's bed. "No, here."

"I am here," Stiles said, but he came a little further and it was finally close enough for Derek to pull him onto the bed and kiss him. Stiles sank into it, grinning against Derek's mouth and then moaning and using his hands to cup Derek's cheeks and run through his hair and hold onto his shoulders.

They broke apart and Derek breathed out, "I deserve nice things."

"I'm not that nice," Stiles said, and it made Derek laugh. "I could be nice."

"I think I'd rather you be you." That got him another kiss, and Derek slid his hands under the gown to grip Stiles by the thighs. "So, is this our first date?"

"I guess?" Stiles drew back, poking Derek in the chest. "Invest in tailoring? Seriously?"

It took a moment for Derek to remember the comment card he'd filled out the first time he'd seen Stiles, and then he shrugged. "I regret nothing."

"You're not nice," Stiles said. "This might work out."

"Of course it will," Derek said. "I'm insured against catastrophe."


End file.
